Power powerbook with ac lead through battery

macrumors newbie

I would like to power my old Powerbook G4 15" 1 GHz Aluminium FW800 through the battery connector using the original 65w power adapter. This is going to be a digital photo frame, so it's not for anything important.

macrumors regular

The battery uses a different connection to the logic board than the DC-in board, however, what you could try to do, is reroute the dc-in board's cable out through the battery door. however, this could involve some ugly hole drilling in the frame of the laptop.

thread startermacrumors newbie

Thanks for your replies, but I can't use the DC-in board because the power connector has been taken off and there is noway i can solder to it since they person i bought it from went and destroyed that tiny, but crucial part of the pcb, but the computer still works with the battery.

Here's a picture of the oct inside the battery, can you tell me what wires do what?

macrumors regular

I actually just replaced the DC-in board on my iBook G4, it's a pretty cheap part ($8-$30 depending on how reputable a reseller you buy it from) and a pretty easy replacement as well. You might want to look into that on ifixit.com

thread startermacrumors newbie

I know its pretty cheap, but since this is a picture frame, it can't actually fit the dc-in board and the connector in at the same time, so thats why i need to put the power through the battery connector.

macrumors regular

I'm all up for tinkering (quite handy with the solder iron myself) but the battery connector is not just a DC input. Get a circuit diagram of the board if you want to confirm. It's a charge circuit with a feedback loop. Please don't fry a good logic board this way. Perhaps there is another DC input source on the board, but you would need to confirm this by looking at the schematic.

thread startermacrumors newbie

The Logic board is on its last legs really, the HDD port is broken, so I had to do a bit of hacking the open firmware to get it to boot from USB, so this is really a project to do things differently with a powerbook. Here are some pictures of it at the moment so you can see that it's not meant to be an everyday computer. I already have an iMac and another Powerbook.

macrumors 6502a

unless you want to rip the battery apart, find a way of regulating the voltage to the right level and finding where to solder to the inside of the batteries this simply isn't possible, even if you did hook it up without the battery and got the right voltage it still wouldn't work, there are certain signals the battery sends to the comp which are needed, without those it simply won't start, even with power at the right points, it's not worth your time, just get another dc in board, believe me, i have tried this myself

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